It’s been a crazy couple of weeks for Chris Capko.
On Monday, March 9, Capko and his wife, Miranda, welcomed their third child. That same night, Capko traveled to Charlotte to fulfill his role as the associate head coach for Southern Methodist University as the Mustangs played in the ACC Tournament.
On Sunday, March 15, Capko and the rest of the Mustangs waited anxiously and then celebrated as SMU heard its name called on Selection Sunday for the first time since 2017. Three days later, Capko would coach his final game with SMU as the Mustangs were eliminated by Miami (Ohio) in the First Four round of March Madness.
And on Friday, March 20, Capko was officially hired to be the next Ball State basketball head coach.
“Everything is a blessing, so I’m not complaining, but it’s been a whirlwind for sure,” Capko said in a phone interview with The Star Press. “It’s been a lot of highs in there, haven’t been a lot of lows other than losing a couple of games, but there’s been a lot of highs. In the end, just very excited and ready to get started.”
The 21st head coach in Ball State basketball history, Capko will take the reigns at Ball State after a decade as a top assistant for veteran coach Andy Enfield — eight seasons at Southern California and the last two years at SMU. Prior to his time at USC, Capko was also an assistant at Stetson (2009-11), Georgia Southern (2011-13) and Florida International (2015-16). He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Marshall (2007-09) after a standout playing career as a point guard at South Florida.
Although he has nearly two decades of college coaching experience, Ball State will be Capko’s first head coaching gig. He has been considered a rising star in the college coaching world for a few years now, earning recognition from The Athletic as one of the top Power 5 assistants in the country and from Silver Waves Media as one of the top 50 most impactful high major assistant coaches for two seasons in a row.
With that recognition came plenty of interest and opportunities, but Capko was patient and willing to wait for the right one. When Ball State approached him this year, the administration’s commitment to rebuilding a winning program made him feel certain that the perfect fit had come along.
“The biggest thing is honestly just the administration and the alignment,” Capko said. “I’ve been plenty fortunate for my career, I always said I could be patient but didn’t have to jump at anything either. For me, it was important to go to a place where they cared, they were invested, there was alignment and they wanted to be competitive, and they wanted to do what they could to help me.”
Capko also cited the opportunity to coach in the Mid-American Conference as a key factor that pushed him towards making Muncie the next stop of his coaching journey.
“It had to be the right one in the right league, and the MAC’s a great league,” Capko said. “Really good basketball league in this area of the country, a really big-time basketball area, so I felt like for a first job, I couldn’t ask for much better, and again with the alignment of the administration, the timing of it just felt right.”
Capko does not have any prior ties to Indiana, the MAC or the Midwest. He played his high school and college ball in Florida and has coached in the South, Sun Belt and West Coast areas. However, he has had success recruiting local talent at every stop and expressed excitement about recruiting the best high school talent the Midwest has to offer.
“I know I’m not from the Midwest, nor do I have Midwestern ties, but it was the same thing when I went to LA at USC,” Capko said. “I wasn’t from the West Coast, didn’t have West Coast ties, still ended up signing McDonald’s All-Americans from the West Coast. When we went to Texas, I didn’t have Texas ties.
“What I will tell the people of Muncie and the fan base is that I can fit in anywhere. I’m going to fit in the Midwest, I’m going to fit in Muncie, and I’m going to turn over every stone that we need to in Indiana and the Midwest to get the players to Ball State that we can because I’ve done that before.”
Capko also believes that the MAC’s recent high profile — fueled by Miami’s stellar season and the conference putting two teams in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1999 — will help when it comes to Midwestern recruiting.
“I think it definitely helps raise the profile of the league, which helps everybody,” Capko said. “What Miami of Ohio did, seeing them up close in person, they were really good, so it gave me even more insight to the league, watching them a lot down the stretch. I think, all in all, the MAC’s viewed positively nationally, especially by kids in this area, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to go out there and get talented kids.”
Since the Ball State job opened up, the national narrative surrounding it focused on the lack of resources and NIL funding for the program compared to the Miami’s and the Akron’s of the MAC. Despite these concerns, Capko is confident that the resources are in place for the Cardinals to be competitive in the MAC and that increased NIL funding ultimately falls on him to create excitement and fundraising opportunities.
“That’s part of the reason I wanted to come is because I felt like the resources were competitive enough to help me win,” Capko said. “President (Geoffrey) Mearns, athletic director (Jeff) Mitchell, they’re doing what they can to make us competitive. I don’t want to throw the numbers out there, but it’s enough to be competitive in the MAC, and so I feel good about it. In terms of NIL, we got to go out there and continue to keep getting more, and that’s my job to help fundraise stuff and generate excitement to keep doing that, but there has been enhanced resources that are in place to allow us to be competitive, and that was part of the draw.”
It’s no secret that Ball State basketball has been floundering for a quarter-century now. The Cardinals have not won the MAC nor qualified for the NCAA Tournament since 2000. In that span, Ball State has posted nine winning seasons and just four seasons with 20 or more wins. The Cardinals have not qualified for the MAC Tournament for the last three seasons and haven’t won a game in the conference tournament since 2019. The fanbase has been hungry for a turnaround for a long time — a return to the glory days of the 80’s and 90’s when the Cardinals made six trips to the Big Dance over those two decades, including a Sweet 16 run in 1990.
For Capko, the biggest key to such a turnaround will be the ability to retain and develop talented players that will drive fan engagement and create an attachment to the program that is increasingly difficult to sustain in today’s era of unrestrained player movement.
“There’s no way around it, we’ve just got to come in and work hard,” Capko said. “It goes to the vision and the alignment again, the people above me wanting to put stuff into play and resource me properly to be competitive. That’s going to allow me to go out there and evaluate really good kids, identify really good kids and eventually recruit them, bring them to Muncie. It’s my job, once we get them, to be able to retain a certain amount and build this team with continuity, and hopefully that allows the fanbase to come in and really get behind us and make our home court advantage as good as anybody’s.”
Capko has already gotten to work on filling out his staff and plans to spend the coming days and weeks meeting with players from last year’s team. Many of these players have already declared their intentions to enter the transfer portal, but Capko and his eventual staff will have time to change their minds before the portal officially opens on April 7. Once he has a firm idea of who is coming back, Capko will build his first Ball State team around the strengths and weaknesses of those players.
Beyond staff and roster construction, the next step for the new Cardinals coach is engaging with the people of Muncie. Capko wants to foster a relationship between his program and the community that allows the two to connect on a deeper level than fandom.
“Get out into the community and open this thing up to the people of Muncie,” Capko said. “I want to make our program very accessible. I want people to be able to come by practice. I want people to get to know me and my staff. I want people to get to know our players. Making those in-roads in the community is going to be key to us because I want the people of Muncie to identify with our program. I want them to come to games and be excited about our group.”
Contact Cade Hampton via email at cbhampton@usatodayco.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @CadeHamp10.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: New coach Chris Capko is ready to lead Ball State basketball revival
Reporting by Cade Hampton, Muncie Star Press / Muncie Star Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
